News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

The proposed law would make it illegal for Irish citizens to buy goods and services from Israeli citizens in what they define as the occupied territories. That would make it illegal to buy an ice cream, a postcard or a bottle of water in the old city of Jerusalem.

…Prof. Kontorovich says Irish leaders may be hesitant to pass the bill.

“One of the only reasons the law has not been passed yet is because the Irish government is properly worried about the consequences it’s going to have for Irish companies doing business in America and many of the large American companies doing business in Ireland like Apple. Because America has strict laws against boycotting Israel,” he explained.

This is simply BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) on steroids. First of all, there are no ‘occupied territories.’ That is a term invented by Arabs who still want to drive the Jews into the sea. Second of all, this is antisemitism pure and simple. America has laws against boycotting Israel because these boycotts are not morally justified. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has freedom of religion–Jews, Muslims, and Christians are all free to worship in Israel. Also, a boycott of goods in these areas hurts the Arabs who work there more than it hurts the Israelis. Arabs commute from the Arab territories that have no commerce into Israel where commerce flourishes. When companies in the border areas of Israel close because of boycotts, the Arabs suffer.

“There’s always a kind of calming feeling when I think of the tragedy of the Holocaust, that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity . . . in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust, post-tragedy . . . And I love that it was my ancestors that provided that in many ways.”

That sounds very nice, but history tells a different story. Haj Amin al-Husseini was the mufti of Jerusalem. He met with Hitler and visited German troops.

The article reports:

According to the German transcript of the meeting, the mufti said: “An appeal by the Mufti to the Arab countries . . . would produce a great number of volunteers eager to fight.”

To the mufti’s delight, Hitler promised that after conquering the Southern Caucasus, “Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere.”

Meanwhile, the British gave in to Arab demands, sharply limiting the number of Jews who could enter the Mandate during the Holocaust. Ships were turned around and, like in many Western countries, Jews were sent back to certain death in ­Europe.

After the United Nations voted in 1947 to partition mandatory Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, five Arab armies invaded in an attempt to make it all Arab. Sounds like a really safe haven, Rep. Tlaib.

In 1948, the Arabs living in Israel were told to leave their homes to join with the Arab nations surrounding Israel to ‘drive the Jews into the sea.’ They were promised that after the Jews were defeated, they would get their land back. Obviously the Jews were not defeated, and they lost their land. The story that Ms. Tlaib is telling is purely fiction, although it may be what she was taught growing up. Truth is the first casualty of war, and in the Middle East the truth is easily lost or distorted.

On October 31, Breitbart reported that after the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue on October 27, Jewish Americans are taking firearms training in record numbers. It is unfortunate that Jewish Americans feel the need for weapons training, but considering the lessons of history, it is perfectly understandable.

The article reports:

And while there are some members of the Jewish community pushing back against the idea of using guns to keep synagogues safe, Stern notes, “To wait for law enforcement to arrive simply is not the answer.”

Zev Guttman was afraid of guns until Saturday’s attack, but now he chooses to be armed. He said, “Everybody has to find a way to react; this is my way.”

Brooklyn borough president Eric L. Abrams reacted to the Pittsburgh attack by making clear he will be armed when he goes to a synagogue. He said, “It’s not popular, but it’s right.” He added, “We have to live in the real universe that we’re in.”

NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said, “I applaud and agree with Eric L. Adams and I am registering immediately for a gun license. And I encourage other Jews to do so to protect their institutions and synagogues. If we are targets, we need to be prepared.”

In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group.

In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not “politically reliable.”

Our Second Amendment is important. Gun registration has too much opportunity to be abused to be a realistic policy. Are you willing to allow a government that in the past has spied on Americans and used government agencies to fight political opponents have access to information regarding gun ownership?

America would be a safer place if all law-abiding citizens took firearms training.

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story about a proposed UNESCO resolution regarding Israel. The resolution is further evidence that the United Nations has lost its way as a peace-keeping organization and has become an outlet for antisemitism around the world.

The article reports:

The United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed a draft resolution on Thursday that failed to acknowledge the Jewish people’s ties to the Temple Mount, raising ire in Israel.

The proposal “strongly condemns the Israeli escalating aggressions and illegal measures against the Waqf Department and its personnel, and against the freedom of worship and Muslims’ access to their Holy Site Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif, and requests Israel, the Occupying Power, to respect the historic Status Quo and to immediately stop these measures.”

It omits the Jewish name for the holy site—the Temple Mount—and instead refers to it only by its Muslim name—Al-Haram Al Sharif.

One of the things that happened after the 1967 war was that Israel allowed religious people access to their religious sites. Under Muslim rule, that does not happen–Christian churches and Jewish synagogues are destroyed when Muslims control a country along with historic artifacts.

Currently, one of the strongest voting blocs in the United Nations is the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. This bloc is made up of a number of nations that support a worldwide caliphate, Sharia Law, and the destruction of Israel. As long as this bloc is a major player, the United Nations cannot function as an organization working toward world peace.

David conquered the Jebusites and captured Jerusalem 3,000 years ago. Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish life and worship ever since. Herod the Great raised the Second Temple, where Jesus taught and, according to the Gospels, drove out the money-changers. Jesus was arrested, tried and executed in Jerusalem. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple following the Jewish rebellion not long thereafter. Jews have lived in Jerusalem, and sought to return there from around the world, for millennia. Muslims arrived in the area roughly 1,600 years after the Jews, on the most charitable interpretation of history.

Temple Mount is exactly that–the site of the Second Temple, for sure, and perhaps, as tradition records, the location of Solomon’s temple and, long before that, the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. To suggest that Temple Mount has no historical connection to the Jewish people, and the modern state of Israel, is ridiculous–precisely the sort of absurdism that international leftists, and especially Arabs, engage in. It would be like claiming that Washington, D.C. has no connection to the American people, only worse, by 2,750 years or so.

The Israeli government has gone to the length of issuing a publication detailing the millennia-long relationship between the Jewish people and the Promised Land. I admire the Israelis’ patience, but in their shoes, I think I would tell the lunatics–the UNESCO resolution was sponsored by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, and supported by any number of Europeans–to get stuffed.

It is truly time for the United States to leave the United Nations and to evict them from their New York City headquarters. One of my daughters suggested that they might leave voluntarily if we forced them to pay all of the diplomats’ parking tickets. I think that is a really good idea.

This story is based on a story from November 2015, but it is particularly relevant now. As I have said before, I am not a strong supporter of Donald Trump, but I am dismayed at the charges routinely leveled against him that have no basis in fact. One day I am going to read in the news that Donald Trump conferred with aliens on Mars before deciding to run for President (and what is worse–there will be people who believe that).

On November 13, 2015, The American Spectator posted as article about some activities of Donald Trump during the 1990’s. These activities totally negate the most recent charge that Donald Trump is a racist.

This is the story:

…The culture clash began to approach a climax last fall, when Mr. Trump’s lawyer sent members of the town council a copy of the film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a film that deals with upper-class racism. Mr. Trump then approached the town council about lifting the restrictions that had been placed on the club. He also asked some council members not to vote on the request because their membership in other clubs created a conflict of interest.

… Mr. Foxman seems pleased that Mr. Trump has elevated the issue of discriminatory policies at social clubs. “He put the light on Palm Beach,” Mr. Foxman says. “Not on the beauty and the glitter, but on its seamier side of discrimination. It has an impact.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Foxman says, the league has received calls from Jewish residents telling of how Palm Beach clubs are changing. Locals concur that in the past year, organizations such as the Bath and Tennis Club have begun to admit Jewish patrons. The Palm Beach Civic Association, which for many years was believed to engage in discriminatory behavior, this month named a Jewish resident as its chief officer.

In other words? In other words, long before he was running for president, there was Donald Trump battling racism and anti-Semitism in Palm Beach society. Using every tool at his disposal.

This was almost twenty years before Donald Trump announced his run for the Presidency. These are not the actions of a racist.

Regimes and terrorist organizations around the world ruthlessly persecute the LGBT community.

In Syria, ISIS throws gays off rooftops. In Iran, the regime hangs gays from cranes.

Too many people have remained silent in the face of this awful persecution.

This week’s shooting wasn’t merely an attack on the LGBT community. It was an attack on all of us, on our common values of freedom and diversity and choice.

Radical Islamist terror makes no distinction between shades of infidel.

This week it was gays in Orlando. A few days before that it was Jews in Tel Aviv. Before that it was music fans in Paris; Travelers in Brussels; Yazidis in Iraq; Community workers in San Bernardino; Christians and journalists in Syria.

All of us are targets.

We believe that all people are created in the image of God.

ISIS, by contrast, believes that all people who aren’t just like them deserve to die.

We will not be terrified into submission. We will fight back. And we will triumph.

Today I ask you to reach out to friends in the LGBT community. Comfort them. Tell them you stand together, we stand together as one. And that you will always remember the victims.

Tell them they will never be alone, that we are all one family deserving of dignity, deserving of life.

I have no doubt that those who seek to spread hate and fear will be defeated.

Working together we will defeat them even faster.

We need to stand united, resolute in the belief that all people regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of their race, regardless of their ethnicity, all people deserve respect, deserve dignity.

She is glad to have the opportunity for a funeral, says the mother. “A burden” fell from her heart. Such a farewell ceremony is important for his friends, too. The funeral service will be conducted by Pastor Sieghard Wilm and the Albanian Imam Abu Ahmed Jakobi. Florent Prince N., as his name was originally, was baptized as a Christian and converted to Islam later.

Florent was born in Cameroon, came to Germany as an infant, and grew up in St. Pauli [an inner-city district of Hamburg]. Probably when he was 14, he came into contact with the radical Salafist scene, and converted to Islam. In May last year, he travelled on a fake passport to Syria to fight for the Islamic State.

In Syria, it seems, he realised that the circumstances had little to do with what had been promised to him. He therefore recorded an audio message in Rakka in Southwestern Syria, in which he criticised the IS. Shortly thereafter, he was dead. In early March, the audio file was distributed. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution thinks it is possible that he was punished for his message by the IS.

Pastor Wilm himself knew Florent from his work with youth. He [Florent] had been a friend of the pastor’s foster son for several years, and active in the community. There are photographs of him climbing up the facade of St. Pauli Church. It was important to him, so Wilm, that Christians and Muslims celebrate together, to make it clear that they pray to a “god of peace”.

You mean the ‘religion of peace’ that just killed 25 Iraqis by dissolving them in nitric acid (story here)?

The article at the above link also states:

ISIS has published a list of punishments for crimes, everything from theft and homosexuality to “spying for the unbelievers.” The punishments seem almost unbelievably cruel to us, but all of them have a sharia law justification. When it put 13 teenagers to death for watching soccer on television, it cited their ‘breaking religious law’ as the reason for their murder. When it crucifies people accused of banditry, there is a reason in sharia law for the practice.

Thus, this reported method of execution by acid ought also to have a sharia law justification. None has yet been forthcoming, but if the report is true there must be some reason why ISIS thought it was an appropriate and fitting punishment for spies. Regardless of the opinion of Western experts on Islam, ISIS believes it is enacting sharia accurately. They have studied it carefully, and always have reasons for their atrocities that are rooted in sharia law principles.

The young man died fighting for ISIS. I don’t think a Christian funeral was appropriate. A Muslim funeral would have been appropriate. I am not making a judgement on the fate of the young man’s soul, I am simply reflecting on the fact that he was a Muslim at the time of his death. The god of Islam is not the God of Christianity. If you compare the Koran and the Bible, that fact becomes very evident. The Bible makes it very clear that God loves the Jewish people; the Koran calls for the destruction of both Christians and Jews. Christians who choose to align themselves with Muslims will eventually have a very rude awakening.

A memo issued earlier this month by the Obama administration directs the U.S. “trade community” and government partner agencies to explicitly label Israeli-made goods that have been produced in the West Bank.

The area that President Obama refers to as the West Bank is part of Israel. In an article I posted in April of 2011, I explained:

“Both the New York Times and the Washington Post, in their April 22 editions, report that a group of prominent Israeli leftist intellectuals demonstrated in Tel Aviv in support of a Palestinian state based on the “1967 borders.””

…“Compounding this lie, the Times and the Post also erase from actual history the fact that during Jordan’s illegal 1949-67 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the entire Old City of Jerusalem, Jews were barred from Judaism’s holiest sites — the Western Wall, Temple Mount and Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs. A return to the 1967 line would deal Jews a similar fate.

“The truth, so lacking in the Times and the Post, is that Israel still awaits an eastern “border” that can and will be fixed only as part of a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , as mandated by the UN Security Council in Resolution 242. In the meantime, history and Arab aggression have swept away the 1949 armistice line and, notwithstanding the lie perpetuated by the Times’ Isabel Kershner and the Post’s Joel Greenberg, a “border” still remains an elusive quest that has yet to reach its final destination.”

This is a map of the British Mandate for Israel:

I need to explain that Palestine was the name the British gave to Israel. There never was a Palestinian state. I really think Israel has made enough land concessions. The land Israel has not brought peace, it has simply provided additional launching pads for Hamas to launch rockets at Israeli civilians. Labeling goods that are from Israel as not from Israel is a petty cheap shot that should be beneath the American government.

Anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses spiked in 2015, with 302 incidents against Jewish students recorded at 109 schools in 28 states, according to a new report warning that the rise of anti-Israel organizations is fueling hatred and making many campuses unsafe for Jews.

The array of incidents were recorded at many universities and often included Nazi imagery, slurs calling Jews “evil,” and calls for Jews be murdered, according to a report published by the AMCHA Initiative, an organization that seeks to protect Jewish students.

The organization created an online database that logs in real time reports of new anti-Semitic incidents at colleges across the nation. Several anti-Semitic incidents have been recorded in the first month of 2016.

AMCHA – The code word that helped survivors identify fellow Jews in war ravaged Europe now stands for another kind of support system. Established in 1987 by a group of Holocaust survivors and devoted mental health professionals, AMCHA set out to create a framework for mutual aid,memory processing and grief resolution. Now, close to three decades later, AMCHA provides a full range of psychological and social services to Holocaust survivors and their families and continues to be a home and safe place for them to unburden their hearts and share their stories with others.

Anti-Semitism has been a problem on American college campuses for a while. In June of 2012, I posted an article about anti-Semitism at colleges in America. The article deals with a presentation by Professor Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of the University of California Santa Cruz.

In that article, I reported:

Professor Rossman-Benjamin pointed out that there are two basic forms of anti-Semitism on our college campuses–the bullying, intimidation, and name-calling directed at individual Jewish students and the attempt (often supported by professors) to delegitimize Israel. The second sometimes takes the form of petitions that universities divest themselves of any investments in Israel.

One of the sources of the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment is a group called the Muslim Students’ Association (a group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood).

The article at the Washington Free Beacon concludes:

At least 15 college campuses—including George Washington University, the University of Maryland, and Tufts University—had incidences of anti-Semitic graffiti, including swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs.

“Jews—the root of all evil” was written on a wall in the Brooklyn College campus library, the report found.

Other incidents across the country include mezuzahs being vandalized, swastikas being scrawled on school buildings, and convicted terrorists being invited to speak on campus.

At Towson University, one vandal repeatedly went across campus writing, “Hitler was right” and “with Jews you lose.”

“Anti-Semitism, what many of us thought only a decade or so ago was a sad part of our history, continues to rear its ugly head on campuses from coast to coast,” Beckwith said in a statement. “What those of us that monitor cases on a regular basis know is today’s anti-Semitism not only includes swastikas and historical anti-Jewish slang.”

The presentation by Professor Rossman-Benjamin took place in a synagogue. After the presentation a group of people were standing around discussing what they had just heard. One person in the audience who was Jewish mentioned to me that her daughter had encountered anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment at the college she attended in a major metropolitan area. She commented sadly that she wished she had sent her daughter to a Christian college, where she felt her daughter would have been treated better. While I am glad that the woman understood that most Christian colleges are not anti-Semitic and support Israel, I am saddened that many American campuses are teaching and allowing the racism that is anti-Semitism.

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about the recent Hanukkah celebration at the White House. Not only did the Rabbi speaking totally ignore the historical significance of Hanukkah, he insulted the Jewish people who were celebrating the holiday. Somehow the press neglected to comment on that particular part of the story.

And I know we bring many people here with us, each and every one of us.

I stand here today with my 90-year-old father, whose parents fled the Ottoman Empire. And as they passed by Lady Liberty they planted within us the promise that the gates would stay open for all immigrants and all refugees who would come to build America.

And I also stand here with my fierce family of clergy and Black Lives Matter activists who took to the streets of Ferguson to stand firm until all members of the community would see God in the face of the other.

I stand here for two groups of St. Louis moms, one working to get the guns off of our streets, and the other working to get help clean up the fires of the toxic nuclear waste that are threatening our lives in St. Louis and throughout the country.

And, of course, I stand with my sisters who lit these lights at the Kotel this year.

I stand here to light these lights that say no to the darkness of Islamophobia, and homophobia and transphobia and racism and anti-Semitism and all the other isms that dare to dim our hope.

And I stand here, like President Rivlin said, the Maccabees of old who defied the culture of their time that said that destiny could not be changed, and instead they jumped in to write a new story that demanded freedom and equal opportunity for all.

And today, friends, we stand with the President of the United States and the President of Israel, who today stand together in this critical moment in history when we must do everything to ensure security for Israelis and justice for Palestinians as allies committed to a lasting peace for all people.

In a world of political correctness, when did it become appropriate to praise Allah at a Jewish celebration? This is a new degree of insensitivity on the part of the Obama Administration–I realize that President Obama was not the speaker, but he should have responded to the remarks.

In case you are ready to accuse me of cherry picking, here is the full video. The insensitive remarks begin at about the 8:49 mark.

Datechguyblog posted the winning picture from the Draw Mohammed contest in Garland, Texas. This picture perfectly sums up the battle for free speech. The problem in Texas was not Pam Geller’s contest–it was the Muslims who felt that it was their duty to kill people exercising their right to free speech. P–s Christ is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine. It was part of an art exhibit in New York. As offensive as it was, no one who was offended attempted to kill anyone. In the mid-1970s, Skokie, Illinois, was at the center of a case concerning the First Amendmentright to assemble and the National Socialist Party of America, a neo-Nazi group. Skokie ultimately lost that case. Skokie had a sizeable Jewish population which objected to the Nazi-planned march. The march went ahead. Again, no one was killed. The First Amendment allows for freedom of speech. It does not protect anyone from being offended by that speech. The First Amendment should not be curtailed–if Muslims cannot live under the laws of America, they need to leave. If anyone comes to America, they need to be willing to live under the laws of America. The problem is not Pamela Geller–the problem is people living in America who are prone to violence and do not respect the rights of Americans.

The university’s home is Ariel, what some call a “West Bank settlement” in territory Palestinians want for a future state. It’s also part of the land promised to the Jewish people in the Bible as an eternal inheritance.

That has led to boycotts of the university by European governments and the U.S. State Department, Friedman said.

Oddly enough, despite the politics, the university represnets a model for co-existence. Some 15,000 Israeli Jewish and Arab students study here together in Hebrew — without a problem.

The article further explains:

Chancellor Yigal Cohen Orgad credits the university’s success to creating an informal atmosphere in which students see each other eye-to-eye.

He thanked God there are no conflicts at the university.

“We passed in Israel two intifadas, this university,” Orgad said. “There was [not] one evening or one day of tension between Jews and Arabs that study here.”

Despite its cutting-edge research, pastoral setting, and quiet campus life, some in the international community see Ariel University as a controversial place.

“We don’t have problems with other universities and research institutes,” Orgad said. “We have real problems with many governments. First of all in Europe and part of the American government, i.e., the State Department, that tries to boycott us formally or informally.”

Why? “Because they think we don’t have the right as Jews to live here in Samaria,” Orgad told CBN News.

Practically speaking, the boycott makes it difficult to obtain grants and actually hinders things like helping neighboring Arab villages improve their quality of life.

It seems very obvious that the University has managed to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs who study there. If there is peace there, the governments in Europe and America need to stop complaining.

At bottom, this controversy is not mainly about protocol and politics—it is about the constitutional system of checks and balances and the separation of powers.

Under the Constitution, the executive and legislative branches share responsibility for making and implementing important foreign-policy decisions. Congress has a critical role to play in scrutinizing the decisions of the president when these decisions involve national security, relationships with allies and the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Whether or not Iran gets nuclear weapons should not be a partisan issue–if Iran goes nuclear, all Americans are in danger.

Professor Dershowitz continues:

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Speaker John Boehner ’s decision to invite Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to accept, no legal scholar can dispute that Congress has the power to act independently of the president in matters of foreign policy. Whether any deal with Iran would technically constitute a treaty requiring Senate confirmation, it is certainly treaty-like in its impact. Moreover, the president can’t implement the deal without some action or inaction by Congress.

…Another reason members of Congress should not boycott Mr. Netanyahu’s speech is that support for Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. The decision by some members to boycott Israel’s prime minister endangers this bipartisan support. This will not only hurt Israel but will also endanger support for Democrats among pro-Israel voters. I certainly would never vote for or support a member of Congress who walked out on Israel’s prime minister.

Professor Dershowitz concludes:

Inviting a prime minister of an ally to educate Congress about a pressing foreign-policy decision is in the highest tradition of our democratic system of separation of powers and checks and balances.

This is a security issue for all Americans. Anyone in Congress who boycotts this speech should be defeated as soon as they are up for re-election.

“[W]hat’s missing here in Washington is a sense of perspective. Yes, there’s a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World War II or the Cold War.” ~ Ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Advisor

I think someone needs to tell Ms. Rice that Iran is not only building nuclear weapons, but the missiles to transport them with.

The article reports:

In my opinion, Iran, its surrogate terrorists, Shia allies and even Sunni adversaries are in fact—and contrary to Ambassador Rice’s assertion—an existential threat to America, indeed to all of Western Civilization . . . just as were our enemies during World War II and the Cold War. (By the way, some believe that our policies in dealing with Russia’s creeping invasion of Ukraine could indeed lead to another Cold War – potentially a Hot War.)

Consider that just last week, Iran launched successfully its fourth satellite, reportedly weighing 110 pounds, in an orbit tilted at 55.5-degrees with the equator and at an altitude varying between 139 and 285 miles above the earth. Last week’s launch occurred during national ceremonies marking the 36th anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and employed a 72-foot-tall Safir rocket based on the Shahab 3 booster—Iran’s most advanced ballistic missile.

As I have previously written, Iranian satellites, successfully launched in 2009, 2011 and 2012, demonstrated Iran’s capability to launch satellites carrying up to 4400 pounds into orbits that approach the United States from the South at altitudes just right for bathing the entire nation in an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Consequently, our electric power grid could collapse indefinitely, and within a year without electricity up to 90-percent of all Americans could perish from the consequent starvation, chaos, and societal collapse.

Isn’t this an existential threat???? You bet!

Today, we have little or no defense against this threat—and no apparent program to provide one.

Meanwhile, our diplomats are seeking an agreement with Iran that does little or nothing to prevent it from gaining a nuclear weapon as a satellite payload to send the “Great Satan” America back to the 18th century without the agrarian society that then enabled a much smaller population to prosper. Most would perish today.

Meanwhile, the debate in Washington is focused on whether sanctions should or should not be used to strengthen the leverage of our negotiators—who as best as I can tell are only seeking to delay (by a few months) Iran in obtaining nuclear weapons.

It will be interesting, and no doubt sobering, to hear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s views when he addresses a Joint Session of Congress in March. He is very concerned about Iran’s existential threat to the “Little Satan” Israel – we seem oblivious to Iran’s existential threat to the “Great Satan” America.

Clearly, a negotiated outcome that permits Iran to obtain so quickly nuclear weapons that can be deployed on existing and tested ballistic missile launchers is not in Israel’s interest—or ours.

This is the true picture of where we are. President Obama is no friend of Israel and does not want Prime Minister Netanyahu to explain the danger that we face. The White House is trying to undermine what he says before he says it. If there were a way to block the visit, they would.

Expect to see an agreement with Iran in the near future (President Obama needs it for his legacy). The agreement will give Iran everything it wants. Sanctions coming from Congress will be blocked, and somehow the treaty signed will not need Congressional approval (unconstitutional move, but what’s new?). Until Congress develops a spine and begins to limit President Obama, this sort of executive overreach will continue. Unfortunately, in this case, it represents a danger to America.

In 1967, of course, there was no country, territory, or entity called Palestine.

And the boundary between Israel and the territory in question, what had been the Jordanian-occupied West Bank, was explicitly not regarded as a border. As the 1949 armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan made clear, “The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.”

This phrasing helps underscore why CAMERA has long called for newspapers to correct inaccurate references to “1967 borders” (even without explicit references to a pre-1967 entity called “Palestine”) and why we’ve often gotten corrections on the topic. The implication — not often spelled out, though it is in this particular piece — is that there was between 1948 and 1967 a sovereign country between the Green Line and the Jordan River, one that had internationally recognized borders, and one that is therefor the legal sovereign of all land east of the Green Line, whether that be the Jewish Quarter, the consensus settlements of the Etzion block, or beyond.

Readers of this blog might immediately recognize that this isn’t at all true; but the average New York Times reader may not, so the newspaper’s references to 1967 “borders” is likely to lead to substantive geopolitical misunderstanding on the part of its audience.

The New York Times has thanked CAMERA for making it aware of the erroneous language, but has not yet published a correction. We’ll hope to update this space soon with information about a correction.

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist who became a Christian who supports Israel once stated, “In June 1967, I went to be a Jordanian and woke up a ‘Palestinian.'” As we sit idly by and watch ISIS surround Israel, we need to remember that Israel is the ‘little satan’ and we are the ‘big satan.’ We are next on the list. Knowing the correct history of the region is helpful to understanding what is happening.

Yesterday The Jewish Press posted that story of Lassana Bathily, a French Muslim employee at the HyperChacher supermarket in Paris, who saved the lives of 15 Jewish people in the store by hiding them in the freezer. He also had the presence of mind to shut the freezer off.

United for Israel also posted the story, but had a few more details.The article describes the scene, but I felt that it was too graphic to post here. Please follow the link to read the entire story.

Yesterday the Israel National News reported that anti-racism activists in Norway refused to take part in a ceremony remembering Kristallnacht if members of the Jewish community were invited to it. The ceremony took place earlier this week.

According to the article:

According to blog “Norway, Israel and the Jews,” Norwegian organization New SOS Racisme – which claims to act against racism – demanded that the “Zionist Jews of Bergen” be banned from attending the Kristallnacht memorial event held earlier this week.

Gaza suffered damaged during the 2014 Israel-Gaza war. However, leading up to that war, Gaza had been attacking Israel daily with rockets and building tunnels to go into Israel and kill civilians. Money given to Gaza to build infrastructure was instead used to build those tunnels and buy weapons. I have no doubt that money currently given to Gaza will also be used to buy arms and plan military attacks on Israel.

I think I am even more confused. Not only do they want an American program to change due to their islamic standards, they also expect $150,000 for it. Oh and keep in mind that’s only to start the food shelf up. There isn’t a plan yet, get this, on how much will sustain it.

Keep in mind that this is a government program being asked to bend to religious requirements. Would the government do this for Christians, Jews, or any other religion? If the Islamic community wants free food that meets their religious requirements, they need to be responsible for setting up their own food banks. If they want Islamic food, they also have the option of finding a job and earning the money to buy it.

I come here from Jerusalem to speak on behalf of my people, the people of Israel. I’ve come here to speak about the dangers we face and about the opportunities we see. I’ve come here to expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country and against the brave soldiers who defend it. Ladies and Gentlemen, The people of Israel pray for peace. But our hopes and the world’s hope for peace are in danger. Because everywhere we look, militant Islam is on the march. It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam.

Typically, its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds – no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of the world. You know the famous American saying: “All politics is local”? For the militant Islamists, “All politics is global.” Because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world. Now, that threat might seem exaggerated to some, since it starts out small, like a cancer that attacks a particular part of the body. But left unchecked, the cancer grows, metastasizing over wider and wider areas.

…In the past, outrageous lies against the Jews were the precursors to the wholesale slaughter of our people. But no more. Today we, the Jewish people, have the power to defend ourselves. We will defend ourselves against our enemies on the battlefield. We will expose their lies against us in the court of public opinion. Israel will continue to stand proud and unbowed. Ladies and Gentlemen, Despite the enormous challenges facing Israel, I believe we have an historic opportunity. After decades of seeing Israel as their enemy, leading states in the Arab world increasingly recognize that together we and they face many of the same dangers: principally this means a nuclear-armed Iran and militant Islamist movements gaining ground in the Sunni world. Our challenge is to transform these common interests to create a productive partnership. One that would build a more secure, peaceful and prosperous Middle East. Together we can strengthen regional security. We can advance projects in water, agriculture, in transportation, in health, in energy, in so many fields. I believe the partnership between us can also help facilitate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Many have long assumed that an Israeli-Palestinian peace can help facilitate a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab World.

But these days I think it may work the other way around: Namely that a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world may help facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace. And therefore, to achieve that peace, we must look not only to Jerusalem and Ramallah, but also to Cairo, to Amman, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and elsewhere. I believe peace can be realized with the active involvement of Arab countries, those that are willing to provide political, material and other indispensable support. I’m ready to make a historic compromise, not because Israel is occupying a foreign land. The people of Israel are not occupiers in the Land of Israel. History, archeology and common sense all make clear that we have had a singular attachment to this land for over 3,000 years. I want peace because I want to create a better future for my people. But it must be a genuine peace, one that is anchored in mutual recognition and enduring security arrangements, rock solid security arrangements on the ground.

Because you see, Israel’s withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza created two militant Islamic enclaves on our borders from which tens of thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel. These sobering experiences heighten Israel’s security concerns regarding potential territorial concessions in the future. Those security concerns are even greater today. Just look around you. The Middle East is in chaos. States are disintegrating. Militant Islamists are filling the void. Israel cannot have territories from which it withdraws taken over by Islamic militants yet again, as happened in Gaza and Lebanon. That would place the likes of ISIS within mortar range – a few miles – of 80% of our population. Think about that. The distance between the 1967 lines and the suburbs of Tel Aviv is like the distance between the UN building here and Times Square. Israel’s a tiny country.

Yesterday I posted an article at rightwinggranny.com about the plans Hamas had for the tunnel system it had built into Israel. The plans included explosions under kindergartens and the slaughter of kindergarten school children. After thinking about that for a while, I realized that in spite of all I have written about the war between Israel and Hamas, there are some very basic things that I did not understand.

The article I posted included Hamas’ plans for the tunnel system:

Israeli security sources, citing information acquired in interrogations of captured brigands, described a scenario under which hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters would have spilled out into Israel in the dead of night and within 10 minutes been positioned to infiltrate essentially all Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Waiting then in hiding until schools and kindergartens were occupied, the terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible. The plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.

Think about that for a minute. This is not a war about territory. Hamas wants the land, but more than that they want to kill all of the people in the land—children included. Their intention is to eliminate the Jewish people in Israel. This is genocide. This is what Hitler intended. After Hitler, the world said, “Never again.” Did we mean it?

This is not an ordinary war. This is a war in which the people of Israel are fighting to live. Hamas in Gaza needs to be dealt with the same way that Hitler was dealt with—they need to be taken out of power, tried for war crimes, and their supporters put in jail. Hamas was elected—the people in Gaza knew what Hamas was and voted for them anyway. I don’t trust the United Nations to set up a neutral government in Gaza, but control of Gaza has to be taken away from Hamas and other similar terrorist groups.

The criticism of Israel’s military action in Gaza needs to stop. The criticism is coming from people who either don’t understand what is actually going on or have a political agenda. The amount of propaganda coming from Hamas makes it very difficult to realize that Israel is fighting for the lives of its people. Israel did not begin this war, but in the interests of the people in Israel, it has to end the war with the total defeat of Hamas.

On July 1, the U.K. Telegraph posted the story of Hessy Taft, the baby the Nazis used in their propaganda to epitomize the perfect Aryan child. What the Nazis did not know was that Hessy was Jewish. Ms. Taft is now Professor Taft and teaches chemistry in New York.

The article explains what happened:

In 1935, with the city rife with anti-semitic attacks, Pauline Levinsons took her six-month-old daughter Hessy to a well-known Berlin photographer to have her baby photograph taken.

A few months later, she was horrified to find her daughter’s picture on the front cover of Sonne ins Hause, a major Nazi family magazine.

Terrified the family would be exposed as Jews, she rushed to the photographer, Hans Ballin. He told her he knew the family was Jewish, and had deliberately submitted the photograph to a contest to find the most beautiful Aryan baby.

“I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous,” the photographer told her.

He succeeded: the picture won the contest, and was believed to have been chosen personally by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

…Her photograph appeared on widely available Nazi postcards, where she was recognised by an aunt in distant Memel, now part of Lithuania. But the Nazis never discovered Prof Taft’s true identity.

Caroline Glick posted an article on her website today about the recent visit to Israel by Pope Francis. There were a few incidents during the visit that simply were not friendly to the Jewish state and its heritage.

The article reports:

In one of his blander pronouncements during the papal visit, Netanyahu mentioned on Monday that Jesus spoke Hebrew. There was nothing incorrect about Netanyahu’s statement. Jesus was after all, an Israeli Jew.

But Francis couldn’t take the truth. So he indelicately interrupted his host, interjecting, “Aramaic.”

Netanyahu was probably flustered. True, at the time, educated Jews spoke and wrote in Aramaic. And Jesus was educated. But the language of the people was Hebrew. And Jesus preached to the people, in Hebrew.

Netanyahu responded, “He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew.”

Reuters’ write-up of the incident tried to explain away the pope’s rudeness and historical revisionism, asserting, “Modern-day discourse about Jesus is complicated and often political.” The report went on to delicately mention, “Palestinians sometimes describe Jesus as a Palestinian. Israelis object to that.”

Israelis “object to that” because it is a lie.

It seems like a minor point, but it is not. Jesus was Jewish. Period.

The article continues:

Consider first Francis’s behavior at the security barrier.

Reasonable people disagree about the contribution the security fence makes to the security of Israelis. But no one can reasonably doubt that it was built to protect Israelis from Palestinian terrorist murderers. And Francis ought to know this. Francis’s decision to hold a photo-op at the security barrier was an act of extreme hostility against Israel and the Jewish people.

As the former Cardinal of Buenos Aires, Francis may have heard of the November 2002 massacre at Kibbutz Metzer. Metzer was founded by Argentine communists in the 1950s. Metzer is located 500 meters from the 1949 armistice lines which made it an obvious beneficiary of the security fence. But true to its radical roots, in 2002 members of the kibbutz waged a public campaign against the planned route of the security fence. They feared that it would, in the words of Metzer member Danny Dovrat, “ignite hostility and create problems” with the kibbutz’s Palestinian neighbors.

Thanks to that concern, on the night of November 10, 2002, a gunman from the “moderate” US- and EU-supported Fatah terror organization faced no physical obstacle when he entered the kibbutz. Once there he killed two people on the street and then entered the home of Revital Ohayon and executed Revital and her two sons, Matan, 5, and Noam, 4 years old.

Fatah praised the attack on its website and pledged to conduct more assaults on “Zionist colonizers,” and promised to continue “targeting their children as well.”

The Catholic Church does not have a good record in supporting Israel or the Jewish people. Pope Francis needs to condemn the killing of innocent civilians by the Palestinians rather than support a government that has chosen to purchase arms instead of building infrastructure with the money given to it by the United Nations and other countries.

So Israel should agree to set up a Palestinian state and Palestine doesn’t have to agree that Israel is a Jewish state? Does Palestine have to agree that Israel has the right to exist? That might be a little detail to get straightened out before Palestine becomes a state and forms an official military.

The Palestinians did not agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, and considers such recognition to be a new demand. Palestinian propaganda denies Jews the right to sovereignty.

America needs to grow up and realize that we cannot bring peace to the Middle East until Palestine agrees to recognize the existence of Israel and until Palestine stops training its children to hate Israelis (see rightwinggranny.com). Until the culture of hatred changes, there will be no peace.

The article quotes the billboard which features a picture of an Israeli stop sign:

The poster (and Koran 4:171) reads:

“O people of the Scripture (Christians)! Do not exceed the limits of your religion. Say nothing but the truth about Allah (The One True God). The Christ Jesus, Son of Mary, was only a Messenger of God and His word conveyed to Mary and a spirit created by Him. So believe in God and His messengers and do not say: ‘Three gods (trinity)’. Cease! It will be better for you. Indeed, Allah is the One and the Only God. His Holiness is far above having a son.”

The article further reports:

Evangelical Christians from Nazareth have become a growing and integral part of the overall Messianic body in the land, while traditional Christians (Catholics, Greek Orthodox, etc) have been waking up to their historical and religious connection to the Jews and are joining the Israeli army in ever greater numbers.

People of different faiths can live together only if the people involved respect each others’ right to their beliefs. This poster is an example of why there will not be peace in the Middle East until the Muslims accept the existence of Israel and accept the fact that everyone should not be forced into Islam. Unfortunately, the Koran encourages evangelism by the sword.